Credit: Adlit.org

Adolescent Literacy: Resources for parents and educators of kids in grades 4-12 believes that literacy instruction remains as important in these grades as it is in grades K-3.  At AdLit.org, a national multimedia project, you’ll find information and resources to the parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers.

The website’s Author Study Toolkit provides teachers with a unit lesson that allows students to delve deeply into an author’s life and body of work. Whether individually, in small groups, or as a class, students can:

• Critically evaluate an author’s themes, characters, and writing style
• Make connections between the author’s life and work
• Make personal connections between their own experiences and those of the author and his/her characters

In addition to reading several works by an author, key components of the author study include discussion, research, and a final project.  The toolkit helps teachers create a unit tailored to their instructional goals, as well as students’ interests and abilities. In addition to How to do an author study, which includes a checklist to develop a meaningful author study unit, the toolkit provides links to a full array of resources that you can print individually or download a PDF of the entire kit .